NotesThe game has a lot more to it's story and involves a bit of exploring, gathering, and building relationships (or not). I prefer to keep it a bit in the dark. I apologize if my information is consequently very vague but I prefer to let any other information be discovered by the player. This game is being developed solo. It's pretty early in development so a lot is subject to change--at this point I don't think I'll do anything drastic, though.
I don't reccomend you play this game if you're expecting a game like ib or The Witch's House nor do I reccomend it if you're expecting something like SMT/Persona or what have you. If you're looking for games to play on youtube please skip this one.
It's horror themed for the most part, rather than straight-up horror. It probably won't scare you? It isn't really intended to.

Well, as someone who studied psychology for a little bit, I can only welcome a game inspired by one of its chief personality metrics. This, however, gives pause:

Matteroffact the gameplay is a little boring as the story is more important to me.

I suppose it's good that you are at least honest about the game's shortcomings, but it is really not a right attitude to have as a developer. I've seen it before, where developers consider their gameplay process as something that merely exists alongside story, or even impedes it, and time after time, it has led to games that were either mediocre and/or quickly forgotten after release.

To me, the real goal is to achieve a complete integration of storyline and gameplay, where the latter actively complements the former, and the games that achieve it are ones that stand the test of time. It is the reason why so many people still remember Shadow of Colossus so many years after its release, for instance. It is also why the gameplay needs to engage: if the player is bored when controlling the player character, they simply won't care about their story as much as they would others.

Of course it doesn't mean you ought to add gameplay for its own sake. A good rule of thumb when designing a certain mechanic is "How does it relate to their player character? What facet of their personality does it reflect?" If done right, it'll not only maintain the player interest, but it will also lead to deeper characters overall. The current character descriptions sound like you're keeping a bit too much in the dark, IMHO. As an example, here are the character summaries from A * part * ment, a game that's hoping to get funded on Kickstarter:

Nick is a comic artist who just got dumped by Madison, his girlfriend of four years. Now alone in the apartment they once shared, he is trying to work through his thoughts and feelings about her and the years they spent together.

Recently graduated from college, Jim's dream job required him to move across the country and leave everything familiar behind. Jim is now struggling to establish a new life and a new home for himself in a place full of strangers.

Rose is a recent newlywed and up-and-coming novelist. Her newfound fame has introduced a dazzling world into which she is trying to fit her old life and her spouse.

At a young age, May met William on a cable car — it was love at first sight. They were together until the day he died. May is trying to figure out how to cope with losing the love of her life.

Work and a divorce created a rift between Anne and her father, John. Both of them reflect on the past and try to figure out when and why they became so distant from each other.

As you can see, it still keeps quite a lot hidden, yet manages to give us a much better idea of who they are as people.

author=NTC3I suppose it's good that you are at least honest about the game's shortcomings, but it is really not a right attitude to have as a developer. I've seen it before, where developers consider their gameplay process as something that merely exists alongside story, or even impedes it, and time after time, it has led to games that were either mediocre and/or quickly forgotten after release.

Well the thing is I don't really care that much/take it all that seriously. I'm also not terribly concerned on if people like this game or remember it or not. I'm making it for me and me only. But since it was going along so well, I figured, why not share it? Maybe someone will like it and that'll be cool, but it won't really change whether or not I'll keep messing around on rpg maker or ren'py or what have you.

author=NTC3To me, the real goal is to achieve a complete integration of storyline and gameplay, where the latter actively complements the former, and the games that achieve it are ones that stand the test of time. (...) It is also why the gameplay needs to engage: if the player is bored when controlling the player character, they simply won't care about their story as much as they would others.
Of course it doesn't mean you ought to add gameplay for its own sake. A good rule of thumb when designing a certain mechanic is "How does it relate to their player character? What facet of their personality does it reflect?" If done right, it'll not only maintain the player interest, but it will also lead to deeper characters overall.

I already have plans/ideas for that whole integration/relating to the protag thing. It makes more sense for there to be more to do because of the way the protag is (hardworking--so I suppose I can add that to his description, at least), but I haven't figured it out. I'm super super picky about everything so while it won't be meaningless, per say, it'll probably still be boring. Non-exciting, that is. Also, a lot of the game doesn't involve actually doing anything. It's more just exploration with nothing to do. At this point, anyway. I don't know what I'll decide to do in the future.

Also, I have at least two people who volunteered to playtest, so maybe they'll help with making it less boring, or maybe they'll be like "This isn't boring at all?? Why did you say it was boring???" idk. Sun is in very early stages so literally everything is subject to change

author=NTC3The current character descriptions sound like you're keeping a bit too much in the dark, IMHO. As an example, here are the character summaries from A * part * ment, a game that's hoping to get funded on Kickstarter:

I know how to write character descriptions, silly. I just don't want to spoil anything, nor do I want anything at all to be set in stone (as it is, I've already changed things drastically like ~20 times). I admit it doesn't add anything or catch anyone's interest the way it is now, but tbh, even admiting that there's a third character is a spoiler. I also want to go for a show-don't-tell thing in the way of: if you care at all, just play the game to learn what they're like. If you don't care, cool! That's not going to impact my life in any way. Honestly, most of the things I could say are spoilers. Everyone's backstory is a spoiler. Their motivations are spoilers. I wish I could have that make sense. What I've said so far is close to all I could say. I'll attempt to change it but whether or not it will actually get changed is a mystery

(Also I don't want to make a profit, so comparing Sun to any game on Kickstarter is a little weird to me because I just don't care about taking things that seriously. I make games for fun, for me, not for profit or for anyone else.)

tl;dr I don't take this as seriously as you do (game development) nor do I care about Sun being popular all that much to go out of my way to make it appealing, but I'll try to take your advice about certain things

Sorry for the late reply. Was a bit busy over the past couple of days and forgot about this post. Anyway, yeah, I can totally understand making games for oneself and such; it’s simply good to be clear on this, since a lot of (most?) devs on here do try to make their games for an audience.

author=sutorumieI'm super super picky about everything so while it won't be meaningless, per say, it'll probably still be boring. Non-exciting, that is. Also, a lot of the game doesn't involve actually doing anything. It's more just exploration with nothing to do. At this point, anyway. I don't know what I'll decide to do in the future.

Well, exploration with “nothing” to do can still be very much interesting, depending on how it’s set up. Did you check out the recent Her Dreams of Fire, for instance? It’s a very flawed game (as I say in my review), but it’s also unusual enough in its design to be worth playing. Anyway, the way it did exploration of confined places that were nevertheless full of very detailed object descriptions was certainly very illuminating.

As for the Kickstarter comparison, I see your point, but to me art is art, regardless of whether it’s commercial or not (which is also one of the reasons I tend to grade harsher than most other reviewers on the website). So when I invoked that comparison, it was as a piece of art rather something commercial or otherwise.

honestly the game's been completely stationary for awhile now, it had a lot of lore and such but it wasn't really going anywhere and it was very meandering and stopped being fun to work on. I didn't really have any intentions of going back to it so I figured, might as well not get anyone's hopes up or anything. Maybe some day I'll get a good idea on how to translate everything I came up with into an rpg but I don't think it will happen.